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Intro Mary Garden
Other Reviews of Book
Mary's Flowers, Gardens, Legends
and Meditations
A Review:
Mary's Flowers, Gardens, Legends, and Meditations by Vincenzina
Krymow, with illustrations by A. Joseph Barrish, S.M. and
meditations by M. Jean Frisk - October 1999, St. Anthony Messenger
Press, Cincinnati, and Novalis, Toronto, 192 pages, hard cover, 55
color illustrations.
Mary's Flowers is not a book to be read once through for
information and idea development, but one to be visited, savored
and re-visited again and again, prayerfully - as with a Medieval
Book of Hours.
The simple, direct and clear writing and layout of Vincenzina
Krymow's documentation and elucidation of Marian flower symbolism
and its history; of Brother Joseph Barrish's flower illustrations;
and of Sister M. Jean Frisk's flower meditations have a spiritually
unctioned quality which presents and inspires Marian veneration,
devotion and prayerful recourse with a new freshness and vitality.
After dipping into the book, one emerges with the sense of grace
experienced after a spiritual retreat.
After familiarizing ourselves with the organization and contents of
the book, we then, on picking it up, turn to one of Sr. Jean's
flower meditations - entering, through its thought, or perhaps
directly, into affective communion with Mary; a communion which is
quickened by the sense of her presence as one spends time in the
Mary Garden reflecting on her flowers at every hand. Frances Crane
Lillie experienced this sense of Mary's presence in the first U.S.
public Mary Garden, established by her at St. Joseph's Parish
Church in Woods Hole, Massachusetts - one of five prominent Mary
Gardens described in the book - so much so that she entitled her
visitor's leaflet listing the Marian names of the flowers in the
garden, "Our Lady in Her Garden."
As we are schooled by Sister Jean's meditations, and look through
the legendary materials of the flowers, with their myriad of
symbolism, associations and scriptural reminders, we learn to
follow our own meditational inspiration as we work in or move
through our Mary Gardens - in nature, or, away from the
garden, virtually in our hearts and imaginations. In this, we
meditate on, emulate and make prayerful recourse to Mary's life,
virtues, mysteries and divinely endowed prerogatives in our own
lives. In time, as we become more familiar with and are directly
quickened to meditation and prayer by Mary's flowers, our
meditations are intuitively inspired by simply beholding them -
without recourse to words or memory.
With this, our meditations are likewise directly quickened, also,
as we behold Brother Joseph's painted woodcut illustrations of the
flowers of the book - their medieval style bespeaking St. Paul's
teaching of the Doctrine of Signatures, that "through things
visible, we learn of things invisible."
For those inspired through the meditations and legends of "Mary's
Flowers" to plant a Mary Garden, large or small, outdoors, or a
dish or windowsill Mary Garden indoors, the final section of the
book suggests symbolically rich and easy to grow plants for starting
a Mary Garden. The Appendix provides a larger list of some three
hundred Flowers of Our Lady from which to choose.
For gardening instructions readers are referred to the Mary's
Gardens website at:
www.mgardens.org
where still further Flowers of Our Lady are to be found - together
with many flowers symbolic of Jesus' Passion, often grown in Mary
Gardens for further meditations on Mary's sorrowful mysteries.
Also included in this section are descriptions of five major U.S.
Mary Gardens - at Woods Hole, Massachusetts; Annapolis, Maryland;
Cincinnati, Ohio; Dayton, Ohio and Portage, Michigan. Extensive
garden "tours" by the author of the first three gardens, with
numerous photos, are to be found on the Mary Page of the Marian
Library of Dayton, Ohio website at:
www.udayton.edu/mary/main.html (Do a search for "Krymow")
This section concludes with sacramental garden blessings from the
Roman and other rites, which contribute to the sense and efficacy
of Mary Gardens as holy places.
Further Considerations For Marian Devotion Today
In our quickening to reflection, meditation and prayer by Mary's
Flowers, we emulate the first four qualities of true devotion to
Mary, as taught by St. Louis de Montfort - a devotion that is
interior, tender, holy and constant. Further, as Vincenzina sets
forth in the book's marvelous introductory summaries of scriptural,
patristic, medieval and modern devotion to Mary, we are called
by the Church in the Second Vatican Council, for our times, for the
modern world, also to reflect on, emulate, and turn in prayer to
Mary's broader mission in salvation history.
In medieval times, which gave rise to Marian flower symbolism,
the majority of Christians were rural villagers, many of whom lived
out their lives in their native villages without knowledge of other
places and lands, other than perhaps a pilgrimage to their
Cathedral. For them the coming of God's Kingdom was seen primarily
in transcendent, heavenly terms. But today, with literacy and
printing, and modern transportation, communications and TV, most
now have a global perception of the entire world in which we live;
such that "Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done, on earth as it is in
heaven" - for which Jesus instructs us to pray - takes on the much
more specific, immediate, here and now quality of the
grace-dependent reconciliation of the "peace process", of
establishing God's Peaceable Kingdom here on earth.
In this it is affirmed by Creation Theology that our spiritual and
material world was indeed created for the purpose of showing forth
and sharing the divine goodness and action with humans, created
to this end in the divine image and likeness - soul, intellect,
will, heart and body - male and female. And although the world has
fallen - the world soul damaged, and humans darkend in intellect,
weakened in will and disordered in concupicence - all has been
redeemed by Christ, that through the restored grace and inspiration
of the Holy Spirit we may renew the face of the earth so that on the
last day it may be transformed into a New Creation, a New Heaven
and New Earth, in which, our bodies resurrected and rejoined with
our souls, may share in God's goodness and action, lifting up
all in grateful return to the Father, transfigured, in the union of
the Holy Spirit of love, for all eternity.
God's most sublime fulfillment of the Creational purpose of human
sharing has been achieved in Mary through her divinely prepared,
called, and freely accepted, unique role in Creation and Salvation
history - in intimate union and close cooperation with her Divine
Son and Lord, Jesus Christ - as universal co-redeeming, advocating
and mediating personal, church and world Mother and Queen.
In our times, Mary, assumed body and soul into heaven, comes to us,
fully sharing in the Divine action as co-redemptrix, advocate and
universal mediatrix - as our merciful, healing, Mother, as at
Lourdes; and as our merciful Queen of heaven and earth, as at
Fatima, where, for peace on earth, she summons us to universal
reparational consecration, through her Immaculate Heart, to the
Most Sacred Heart of Jesus, and his intentions.
In this consecration we emulate de Montfort's fifth quality of true
devotion to Mary, that in addition to being interior, tender, holy
and constant, it is personally disinterested, without self-interest
- interested only in being the instrument of God's will for
Kingdom, through Mary's divinely endowed motherly and queenly
mediation of all grace, for the reception of and response to which
we prayerfully emulate her virtues..
As it was after medieval times that devotion to the Sacred and
Immaculate Hearts became widespread in the Church, although it had
its private origins earlier, there have been found no popular
medieval flower symbols or legends of the Immaculate Heart of Mary,
although the piercing of Mary's soul with the sword of sorrow was
depicted in art as a sword- or thorn-pierced sorrowful heart.
It was my privilege to discuss this with Frances Lillie, founder
and benefactor of the Woods Hole Garden of Our Lady - who had been
an invalid for years - in the one visit I had with her, in 1954
(although in 1951 I had been able to reach her by telephone through
the providential accident that her nurse thought my call from
Philadelphia to Chicago was from one of her daughters - at which
time she gave us her blessing to continue her pioneering work with
the Flowers of Our Lady and Mary Gardens through the founding of
Mary's Gardens of Philadelphia).
Thus, one day in the late summer of 1954, while I was vacationing
near Woods Hole, Father Stapleton, Pastor of St, Joseph's, who
used to bring Holy Communion to Mrs. Lillie at her summer home,
telephoned to say that she was having one of her rare lucid
periods (I had been attempting for four years, with his assistance,
to meet with her), and that for her birthday the next day her
daughters were inviting me to visit with her for tea.
While wondering what present to bring her, a color postcard of
some bleeding heart flowers providentially caught my eye in a
Falmouth drug store; and as I turned it over, there, in French,
German and English were three European names for this flower:
"Fleur de Marie", "Frauenhertz" and "Heart of Mary". Not having
been found in Frances Lille's medieval research, this more recently
introduced flower signature - from China - of Mary's Immaculate
Heart brought tears of joy as she beheld the card; and we discussed
God's joy in the fullness of the union and sharing of Mary's Heart
with the Sacred Heart of Jesus, her Divine Son and Lord, in the
creation, redemption and sanctification of the world for the
culmination of God's eternal Kingdom.
As deepening devotion to Mary though the centuries and further
definition of her role in salvation history have prepared us for
consecration through her Immaculate Heart to the Most Sacred Heart
of Jesus, so, do the legends, illustrations and meditations
of "Mary's Flowers" likewise have their culmination in devotion to
Mary's Immaculate Heart. In searching through Brother Joseph's
woodcuts I thus rejoiced as I found the heart-shaped petals of "Our
Lady's Rose" - Lychnis coronaria, Rose Campion.
How fitting that the ground-breaking for the culminating U. S. Mary
Garden at the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate
Conception, being donated by the National Council of Catholic
Women, took place on the feast of the Imaculate Heart of Mary, 1999,
and that the dedication of the planted garden is to take place on
this Feast of the Millennial Year, 2000!
Historical Note
In addition to its important contribution to renewed devotion to
Mary and to prayerful recourse to her for the world, Mary's
Flowers also makes a definitive scholarly contribution to the
history of religious flower symbolism.
It does this in a comprehensive and all-inclusive overview of
flower symbolism in Scripture; in the writings of the Church
Fathers, saints and mystics; in the liturgy; in religious art; and
in the legends of the popular oral traditions of the medieval
countrysides - with a cataloging of some 300 flowers symbolically
named for Mary, suggested lists of plants for outdoor and indoor
Mary Gardens, and descriptions and photos of five major
contemporary U.S. Mary Gardens.
In art, the religious flower symbols of patristic and medieval
tradition were incorporated and preserved in medieval and
Renaissance woodcuts, drawings and paintings of the Blessed Virgin
Mary - some titled "Mary Gardens" - and in the miniature paintings
for private meditation in books of hours - as set forth in
Elizabeth Haig's Floral Symbolism in the Great Masters, London,
1913.
In written tradition, religious names of flowers of the oral
traditions of the medieval countrysides were first noted as a group
in C. Bauhin's Plants Which Have Various Holy Names, published in
Switzerland in 1591.
In 1858, Rev. Louis Gemminger, Pastor of St. Peter's Church,
Munich, delivered thirty-one sermons on flower symbols of the
Virgin Mary - one for each day of May - published as Flowers of
Mary, Baltimore, 1984, in English translation from the fourth
German edition.
In The World of Flowers - According to their Names, Sense and
Meaning, Leipzig, 1869, Johanne Nathusius told of the rich fabric
of religious flower names and symbolism in rural legends preserving
them from generation to generation.
Britten and Holland's Dictionary of English Plant Names (1886)
lists some 200 religious plant names - previously mostly excluded
from English herbals and gardening books due to the anti-Marian
bias prevalent at the time of their first printing during the
English Reformation.
In his classic, The Flora of the Sacred Nativity, London, 1900,
Oxford scholar Alfred Dowling reports the extensive religious lore
and use of plants in pre-Reformation English celebrations of the
feasts and seasons of the Church liturgical year - and provides
documentation of their exclusion from English gardening books.
Judith Smith's The Mary Calendar, Ditchling, England, 1930 lists
and describes 50 symbolic wildflowers of Our Lady according to their
bloomtimes in the English countrysides, with some accompanying
legends and lore.
Definitive documentation of some 1,000 religious plant namings in
Germany, with parallels from all over Europe, is to be found in
Heinrich Marzell's classic multi-volumed Deutsches Worterbuch Der
Pflanzennamen, Leipzig, 1928-1967.
A greater number of Marian and other symbolic religious names were
preserved and recorded in the Catholic cultural continuity of
Bavaria and southern Germany than in England, where such continuity
was interrupted by the Reformation. However, it was through niche
plantings of the Flowers of Our Lady found in present-day English
monastery gardens; through the listing of these flowers in Judith
Smith's The Mary Calendar; and through the "Mary Gardens" of the
Virgin surrounded by her symbolic flowers in religious art that
Frances Crane Lillie was inspired to plant the first public United
States Mary Garden, mother garden of the present day world-wide
Mary Garden restoration, beside the Angelus Tower, donated by her,
at St. Joseph's Parish Church, Woods Hole, Massachusetts in 1932.
It is from this historical background and from the carrying forward
of the Mary Garden restoration movement through the research and
impetus of Mary's Gardens of Philadelphia, inaugurated in 1950, and
now, since 1995, through the Mary's Gardens Internet website, that
Mary's Flowers draws in its definitive historical documentation
of the tradition of Marian flower symbolism - from Isaiah's
prophecy of the Blossoming Rod of Jesse, to the planting of the
Marys Garden of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in
Washington, D.C.
John S. Stokes Jr.
Mary's Gardens
Copyright Mary's Gardens 1999
Other Reviews of Mary's Flowers
Publication of "Mary's Flowers" Announced
Mary's Gardens Grow - University of Dayton Quarterly
Marian Flower Treasury - QUEEN of All Hearts